A Perfect Grave Part 33

"I saw that guy a few times. He used to sit in the back. Very quiet. No trouble," the bartender told Henry. "But that cracker was not in great shape. Once he complained about how everybody in the world owed him for what he did."

"That right? And what did he do?"

"He did not elaborate."

Henry was making notes. "He happen to mention who 'everybody' was? Any names?"

The bartender stuck out his bottom lip and shook his head. "People say a lot of things when they're drinking."

Henry was acutely aware of that.

"Anything else you can remember about him?"

"I heard he used to go to the shelter for meals. I told him to get himself a welfare check and a medical card and see a doctor. Clean himself up."

After thanking the bartender, Henry chided himself for nearly forgetting a basic. It was common for ex-cons to apply for welfare while they searched for a job. Stepping out of the Black Jet, he called an old friend who was a welfare fraud investigator at the Department of Social and Health Services.

"Roland King, Division of Fraud Investigations."

"Rollie, it's Henry Wade."

"Hey, pal. Look, you caught me leaving for court. I have to go."

"Just need a second. Can you help me with a quick check on somebody?"

"Ah, Henry you're going to make more work for us. I know it. And we're already way over our heads as it is. Want to work for DFI?"

"Just want to make you look good."

"I've got about two minutes here. What is it?"

Henry gave him Leon Sperbeck's information, his SSN, his date of birth, known addresses.

"Was he ever a client? That's all I'm asking, Rollie."

Henry could hear King typing on a keyboard as he double-checked Henry's info. As a welfare fraud investigator, King had access to nearly all of the department's computerized databases.

"What's the beef, Henry? This guy cheating?" King asked as he waited for the computer to respond to his queries.

"Not sure."

"Here we go. Yes. I can confirm, confidentially, that he's in our system. He's got a medical card. And we have him on General a.s.sistance Unemployable. His status as an ex-convict armed robber presents a challenge in his effort to find a steady job. That it? Because I really have to go."

"Anything else, there? What about the addresses?"

"Henry, I have to go. Wait, what addresses did you have?"

Henry repeated the two he'd checked.

"Nope, I think there's a couple more. Got a pen?"

Henry took them down. Then heard King typing and cursing under his breath.

"That's not right," King said.

"Find something?" Henry asked.

"We just started sending checks for a new client at one of Sperbeck's addresses. The client's got a different name, but the very same address as Sperbeck. d.a.m.n it. I knew it, Henry, you brought me more work."

"So you think Sperbeck's received a check using an alias?"

"Happens all the time."

"Tell me something. When was the last check cashed?"

"Looks to me like two days ago."

Chapter Forty-Six.

That guy in the park was weird.

But Brady Boland never told his mom about his encounter the other day because he figured it was no big deal.

Right. If it was no big deal why was he still thinking about it?

Because the guy had made him nervous, especially after Justin and Ryan said they'd seen him before.

"I saw him lurking around here a couple days ago," Justin said.

"Maybe he's a perv," Ryan said.

"Maybe he's some creepy weirdo who likes to say stupid things to kids," Brady said. "Who knows? Who cares?"

Brady did.

That's why he was still thinking about it, here alone in his room today, while his mom was in the kitchen doing stuff. Brady would never ever tell anyone that the stranger had scared him a bit. That the incident made him miss having his dad around to protect him and his mom-but to admit it would make him some sort of baby.

But the truth was he missed his dad.

The truth was, that it wasn't always bad with his dad. Most of the time it was great. What Brady liked best was when he went out on landscaping jobs with him. His dad was teaching him how to drive the rider mower, showing him how to cut in patterns. And he was teaching him about planting, about soil. About how to make it all look "professional."

Every job they went on his father was always digging, "digging deep." And always saying how important it was to give plants, flowers, shrubs, trees, whatever, "lots of plant food."

Brady loved helping him bury the nutrients. They came in capsules, pellets, spikes, and bricks wrapped in plastic. He loved digging and spreading the rich, dark soil. And it really worked. In the end, it always looked great. Those were the happiest times with his dad before things started going bad.

In the time before he died, his dad always seemed to be under a lot of pressure. Always worrying about stuff he'd never talk about. He got angry all the time. Lost his temper.

And hit him.

Brady hated how things got so bad.

One time something happened that he never told his mom about. Once, after a bad time, Brady's father took him aside and privately warned him.

"You listen to me. You keep your G.o.dd.a.m.n mouth shut about anything that goes on in this house! People are looking for me. Bad people. You do not speak one word about anything! Understand?"

Brady didn't understand.

Nothing made sense back then.

And nothing made sense now with the creep in the park saying weird c.r.a.p.

And nothing made sense about having a stupid tumor in your head trying to kill you while your mom was always on the phone, crying and going through papers and files and junk.

And nothing made sense when sometimes he woke up in the night wondering what it would be like to be dead and how he would miss his mom, miss Justin and Ryan.

Just quit it.

Brady got up from his bed and told himself to stop worrying like a baby.

He went to his window and looked up and down the street.

Besides, Justin made the shot.

Which meant everything was going to be fine.

Brady continued scanning his street, looking for anything strange.

Anything at all.

Chapter Forty-Seven.

Something about the shoes gnawed at Kay Cataldo.

It had cost her a night's sleep, had compelled her to get to her crime lab just after dawn and tear through her files.

It's the shoes. Think, Cataldo! Think!

John Cooper possessed used tennis shoes issued to offenders by the Department of Corrections. But they were not the shoes that had made the impressions at Sister Anne's murder scene. That ruled him out.

Okay, but she'd seen that pattern recently in another open file.

Hadn't she?

Yes.

But where? Where, d.a.m.n it? She struggled to retrieve it from her memory and her computer, gulping coffee while searching her files. Something blurred by.

Stop.

This one.

Sharla May Forrest.

The teen hooker.

This was the one.

Cataldo examined the crime-scene pictures. There was Sharla May, the runaway, naked on the ground in a back alley with a metal hanger garrotted around her neck. She was so young. It broke Cataldo's heart. There was the Dumpster, the trash, and the semidry mud puddle that had captured a partial right shoe impression.

Here we go.

She called up the cast and the image filled her computer monitor. Very familiar. This is looking very familiar. This is looking very familiar. She called up the file notes, read through them, then called up the image of the shoe impression. She called up the file notes, read through them, then called up the image of the shoe impression.

"Hold on," Cataldo told herself.

She loaded her computer with shoe files from Sister Anne's homicide, including the work Chuck DePew had done over at the Was.h.i.+ngton State Patrol's Crime Lab. She called up the images of the shoe impressions, then split the screen of her computer monitor.

How in the world did she overlook this?

Biting her bottom lip, she aligned the photograph from the hooker murder with the sharpest image of the right shoe impression from the nun murder, so that they were in identical scale and att.i.tude.

Cataldo transposed one over the other and set out to look for comparisons.

"Oh boy."

The wear, edges, channeling, the waffle pattern, right down to the fifth ridge with the nice little "X" cut, aligned perfectly.

Cataldo reached for her phone to alert Grace Garner.

They had a multiple murder suspect.

Grace was at her desk at the homicide unit, mining her notes on Cooper's account of the stranger at the shelter.